"He's been through hell and back" -- Reggie Livingston, on his son Shaun

NEW YORK – This never really occurred to us before, but the old man said it, so we feel obligated to share it.

“When you look at the entire picture, Shaun is a better player now than when he hurt his knee in ’07,” Reggie Livingston said.

He was talking about Shaun Livingston, his son, during a phone chat Tuesday, a few hours before the Nets decided to rest their starting point guard in an unremarkable 109-98 going away gift bestowed to the Knicks.

It’s one of those appraisals that wouldn’t mean much from anybody else – not even if it was uttered by a GM – but this was the man who began the process of building an NBA player from the playground up starting when Shaun was 9. This is the guy who dragged Shaun out of bed at 4:30 to work him out. This is the guy who made Shaun dribble a ball out the passenger window of a moving car (“He got that one from his Pete Maravich videos,” the son says). This is the guy who knows Shaun – they both say this – better than Shaun knows himself.

And so he says it: “I don’t know if his handle is as good, but he’s a more complete player than he was pre-injury,” Reggie said. “Defense, post-up, mid-range. He just understands the game better. It’s been seven years since the knee, and we’ve waited for him to finally cross over to where he once was. I think he’s there, and now he can only go up.”

It’s a cogent argument, judging by what’s happened at Barclays these last 3 ½ months. Shaun himself feared that he’d be permanently marked by the events of Feb. 26, 2007, when every ligament in his right knee snapped and his kneecap was dislocated. Once we all thought he’d be the next Penny Hardaway. The Nets liked him so much that Rod Thorn offered Vince Carter in a trade that Elgin Baylor declined. Mike Dunleavy, his coach with the Clippers in those days, thought he would be a triple-double guy -- even in Year 3, when his development was slower than desired.

Then the knee shattered, and it all seemed moot: “He literally had to learn how to walk again,” Reggie said. “You can only guess what that’s like for a professional athlete. He’s been through hell and back.”

For the next five years, Shaun wandered in and out of seven NBA cities, plus the D-League. He seemed resigned to it. Here’s what he said in March 2010: “The reality of it is, that's going to be with me my whole career, and even after my career. It's going to be, 'What if?' It's going to be, 'The guy that could've been.'”

Brooklyn made that assessment a wild misfire.

In the last four months, he has been all glue – not only the most important chemistry guy, but the guy who allowed everyone to move down one spot so this team can discover its identity: Deron Williams to the 2, Joe Johnson to the 3, Paul Pierce to the 4.

Tim Capstraw, one of the smartest guys in the league, put it this way: “One move made all the difference in this team,” the Nets’ radio analyst said. “Now you’re bigger and faster at every position – one day you’re very slow and screen-able, the next day, the speed of the team improves dramatically. One guy did that.”

A guy who can say that he’s never been better, as he reaches for the zenith.

His dad grants him such license, anyway.

“He said that?” Shaun asked in pregame. “Well, yeah, I could be. I always strive to get better. Mentally, I’m definitely smarter with a better understanding of the game. So from that perspective, he’s right. And as far as athleticism, I mean, we’ll never know. But the game isn’t always about athleticism.”

Actually, the explosion is still there – it depends on rest and maintenance, he says. Back to backs are difficult, but there will be no more of those this season. If basketball IQ is a commodity, however, one can assume it will be factored into the contract offer the Nets make in three months.

“Money might be calling, but this is about loyalty, too,” Reggie Livingston said of his free agent son. “Let’s be honest: The Nets helped save his career, and Shaun is a very loyal kid.”

The Nets have been the weirdest team in the NBA this year by a fairly substantial margin. It takes a lot of kismet to write this dirt-to-gold story, and while overall health is a big part of it, it’s the rebirth of one guy that made all the dominoes stand at attention again.

Back home in Peoria, Reggie Livingston knows. And his son, who is in the happiest place of his NBA life, isn’t going to run away from the whole truth.

“I like where I’m at, let’s put it that way,” Shaun Livingston said. “This year’s been everything I could have asked for.”